MARTA KRISTEN PHOTO GALLERY #01

Updated: August 20, 2014

Marta was born Birgit Annalisa Rusanen in Finland on February 26, 1945 to
a Finnish mother and a German soldier who was killed towards the end of
World War II in Europe. Marta was only two months old when she was left in
an Oslo orphanage. In 1949, Professor and Mrs. Harold Soderquist of
Detroit, Michigan adopted her, brought her to America; she was renamed
Marta.

In 1959 the family moved to Los Angeles and Marta attended Santa Monica
High School for a year; she later graduated from Hollywood Professional
School. Producer/Director James B. Harris discovered the pretty, petite
aspiring actress and he arranged for her to get an agent she was quickly
booked for TV programs such as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (in one episode
appearing with her future "Lost In Space" on-screen little brother, Bill
Mumy, when he was only 5 years old), "The New Loretta Young Show" and many
other popular TV series of the day. In 1963, Marta met a graduate student,
and 6 months later they got married.

Marta's career took off, she made a big splash as the mermaid Lorelei in
"Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965) and also appeared in Disney films. But she
would forever be remembered for her signature role of Judy Robinson,
eldest daughter of the first Earth family to venture into the unknown of
outer space, in the "Lost In Space" TV series. However, the audience
reaction to the show was not as great as expected, and Marta found that
over the three years of production, her role (which wasn't very big to
start with) was being gradually diminished. Marta said later in an
interview "The show had so much promise. When it started to be silly, we
all began to look at each other and say, "We're in an episode with talking
vegetables ? Five years of the Actor's Studio, and I'm doing this ?". Even
worse, the show did not feature her prominently - in one of the most
popular episodes, "The Sky Pirate", in which the Finnish-descent actor
Albert Salmi guest starred, Marta had only one word of dialogue, (she gets
to say "good-bye" to the pirate).

Off-screen, Marta tried to find her roots, but it was not until 1969,
pregnant with her first child and travelling alone through Europe looking
for her long-lost relatives, that Marta was able to find her real mother
in Finland; she also met her older sister for the first time, whom she
didn't know about. Later that year Marta returned to the USA and her
daughter Laura was born. Marta concentrated on raising her daughter and
instead of doing television or film work, however she appeared in over 40
TV commercials, which required less time away from home. Marta and her
first husband divorced in 1973. In 1974, Marta met an attorney Kevin Kane,
and they got married (they are still together today).

Marta has remained moderately active in TV and movies, and even appeared
in the big screen version of "Lost In Space" (1998) in a cameo (along with
Angela Cartwright) as a TV journalist. And she is still finding more
family members - in 1997 she discovered that she has a younger brother
living in Sydney, Australia and another sister in Finland that she didn't
know about. And she puts her own family ahead of her career, helping to
raise her granddaughter, her daughter Laura's child, Lena. When Marta
visited Australia for a "Lost In Space" convention for her Aussie fans in
October, 2001, she brought her entire family, including Lena, with her.

Marta still occasionally attends "Lost In Space" and science-fiction
conventions, delighting her many fans even as far-flung as Australia, and
she also occasionally attends nostalgia and autograph shows with her
former "Lost In Space" on-screen sister, Angela Cartwright.